Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace | Page 3

Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace

Grounded in the Reformed faith, our salient values include:
1. The dignity of all persons, despite our universal capacity to do harm;
2. Self-determination of peoples through democratic means;
3. The building up of community and pursuit of reconciliation;
4. Equality under the law and reduction in the separation that fosters inequality;
5. Recognition of our complicity and the need for confession and repentance; and
6. Solidarity with those who suffer.
These values influenced and are linked with the modern understanding of human
rights, as in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948): “[R]ecognition of the
inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family
is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.” While sharing the first four
of these values with countless persons of good will, the prophetic tradition and teaching of
Jesus (as in the Sermon on the Mount; Matthew 5) lead us to confront our enabling of
injustice and move to the side of those who suffer. Our presbyteries have approved the
Belhar Confession of faith from South Africa, which affirms the unity of justice and
reconciliation, “that true reconciliation which follows on conversion and change of attitudes
and structures.” In confronting our own legacies of racial and ethnic separation, we believe:
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“that God, in a world full of injustice and enmity, is in a special way the God of the
destitute, the poor and the wronged… [and]
that the church must therefore stand by people in any form of suffering and need,
which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive
against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters, and
righteousness like an ever-flowing stream;” xi

Presbyterian values and human rights provide a lens through which the study team
examined the situation in Israel-Palestine. Realism requires us to call the current entity,
“Israel-Palestine,” as one state is effectively subsuming the other. This report proceeds by
defining values and then using the categories of the Oslo accords to examine capacities and
functions of statehood. Further, this report notes the grave danger that Israeli government
policies privileging a narrow form of Zionist Judaism may well change a resource-based
struggle to an overtly religious one, eliminating the already-declining Christian minority,
obliterating historical Muslim and Christian sites with enhanced Jewish sites, and
increasing extremist antagonism in the Jewish and Muslim communities. The report’s
findings are summarized here.
The Oslo Challenges
In the twenty-three years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, efforts to establish
two states have achieved some limited successes, such as establishment of the Palestinian
Authority and some security cooperation with Israel. Nonetheless, in accord with the
request for an update of facts on the ground, the Advisory Committee’s study team found
that the situation has stagnated or worsened on the core challenges identified in the Oslo
Accords: 1) Jerusalem, 2) refugees, 3) settlements, 4) security arrangements, 5) borders, 6)
relations and cooperation with neighboring countries and 7) other issues of common
interest. This report does not treat item 6 except by implication. Among the “other issues of
common interest,” the report considers water, economic development in Palestine, and
Gaza.
1. East Jerusalem, which the Oslo Accords identified as the capital of a future

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